My coworker's daughter had this. Over a year later and she is slowly regaining the use of her left arm. They still have no idea how it happened or why. They weren't traveling and weren't around anyone with similar symptoms.

Is having a virus pop up every other year common? I know the "flu" seems to be on a yearly cycle, but every other seems a bit odd.

As far as I know, absolutely not, more likely it has a year long incubation period or other asymptomatic period. That is pretty scary, because it means that carriers have a year to spread the virus before they are able to be identified.

Hospitals and medicine in general tends to be too focused on what your *current* care team wants investigated and the red herrings a group of 1-4 medical experts think are the cause. And in the recent decade or two they have institutionalized ignoring requests from a person's primary care or specialist unless that physician works in that hospital.

Testing and getting accurate diagnoses the first time is not stressed enough, leading to absurd re-admittance rates for hospital ERs. Even more disappointing is to see how often clinicians will simply stabilize and discharge without an ounce of care because of "lower quality" insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately medical tort reform has made misdiagnosis a completely acceptable practice until someone dies.

Hospitals and medicine in general tends to be too focused on what your *current* care team wants investigated and the red herrings a group of 1-4 medical experts think are the cause. And in the recent decade or two they have institutionalized ignoring requests from a person's primary care or specialist unless that physician works in that hospital.

Testing and getting accurate diagnoses the first time is not stressed enough, leading to absurd re-admittance rates for hospital ERs. Even more disappointing is to see how often clinicians will simply stabilize and discharge without an ounce of care because of "lower quality" insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately medical tort reform has made misdiagnosis a completely acceptable practice until someone dies.

You can be glib about ordering a battery of tests per patient, but they are both incredibly expensive, and often performed by extremely overstressed and understaffed departments. Adding to the workload is counterproductive.

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

There were 120 recorded cases across 34 states that first year in 2014, followed by just 22 in 2015. Then 149 cases across 39 states and Washington, DC, in 2016, and a drop to 35 cases in 2017. In 2018, the CDC confirmed 233 cases in 41 states, the largest number yet.

Is the disease unique to the US? And if seen elsewhere, does it follow the same two-year cycle there?

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

You REALLY should remember the /s when you post things like that.

One thing folks don't often realize is that viruses have life cycles that are orders of magnitude faster than humans. This is why they evolve so fast (the annual flu isn't the same bug, after all, but is often a mutated version, or an entirely different one, which is why flu vaccines aren't considered hugely effective at times while it's very effective at other times). It's not beyond the realm of possibility that these issues are a new bug of some kind, or a synergy between similar ones (like a virus that's triggered by a virus - which is a thing).

It doesn't SOUND serious (well, not in a population-ending sort of way, not to belittle the pain and suffering being experienced by the victims and their families and friends), but it might be really tricky to figure out. That the victims all seem to be kids should be some clue, too.

Is having a virus pop up every other year common? I know the "flu" seems to be on a yearly cycle, but every other seems a bit odd.

It's not clear that the virus actually follows a 2-year cycle. There's only been 5 years (each of which has a distinct value), for a total of 120 (=5!) possible permutations. Of these, 16 (13%) have the high-low-high-low-high pattern. By symmetry (proof below), an identical number of permutations will have the reverse (low-high-low-high-low) pattern. That's a 27% chance.

Mathematical derivation of the number of permutations with the high-low-high-low-high pattern:

Spoiler: show

Number of permutations with high-low-high-low-high pattern: since the 5 values are distinct, we can sort them and label them 1-5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Obviously, the labels preserves the ordering of the numbers. The rest of this exercise will deal with labels in place of actual values.

To avoid confusion between labels and positions, we will label the positions A-E, with B and D being low and A, C, E being high.

Each low value needs to be flanked by two higher values. Therefore, valid candidates for positions B and D are 1-3. 1 has to be in a low position because it is the smallest number in the set. We will assume WLOG that 1 is in position B.

If the label in position D is 2, then any permutation of labels in positions A, C, E are valid because the remaining labels are all greater than both of the labels in low positions. There are 6 (=3!) permutations of these values.

If the label in position D is instead 3, then 2 must be in position A. 4 and 5 may be in either of the remaining positions, giving us 2 (=2!) permutations. We now have a total of 8 permutations.

But wait, we assumed that label 1 is in position B. Each such permutation is a reflection of a permutation with label 1 in position D. This grants us a total of 8*2=16 permutations that follow the high-low-high-low-high pattern.

Number of patterns with low-high-low-high-low pattern

Spoiler: show

As in the previous step, the positions are A-E, but we assign labels 1-5 in the opposite order (1=highest, 5=lowest).

Each of the permutations generated in the previous step has labels in positions B and D flanked by higher labels (=lower values in the new ordering). Therefore these permutations have the low-high-low-high-low pattern.

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

Obviously that's in jest - but I seriously question if all the anti-vaxxers enabled some sort of mutation in the Polio virus that's causing this. If so, every last one should be help legally and civilly liable. The idiocy makes my head hurt.

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

Assuming you missed a /sarcasm somewhere ^_^

I didn't think I needed it. Clearly I was wrong.

There are things about which sarcasm and sincerity are impossible to distinguish. I've read your posts before, so I know you're definitely not stupid enough to post that with any sincerity. But get those anti-vaxxers touting their delusions, and, sadly, it sounds EXACTLY like what you posted.

Sucks, yes, but thems the breaks. OTOH, if you want to troll anti-vaxxers with that kind of things, then hit them with facts and outrage them, by all means, go for it. Spouting the delusions without throwing up are handy skills in infiltration.

Hospitals and medicine in general tends to be too focused on what your *current* care team wants investigated and the red herrings a group of 1-4 medical experts think are the cause. And in the recent decade or two they have institutionalized ignoring requests from a person's primary care or specialist unless that physician works in that hospital.

Testing and getting accurate diagnoses the first time is not stressed enough, leading to absurd re-admittance rates for hospital ERs. Even more disappointing is to see how often clinicians will simply stabilize and discharge without an ounce of care because of "lower quality" insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately medical tort reform has made misdiagnosis a completely acceptable practice until someone dies.

You can be glib about ordering a battery of tests per patient, but they are both incredibly expensive, and often performed by extremely overstressed and understaffed departments. Adding to the workload is counterproductive.

It's more counterproductive and adds more workload when people are being readmitted to the ER multiple times per week for months on end, which I have watched happen with situations that crash rapidly and they can only be cared for in a hospital.

I wasn't being glib, I had a family member in and out of the hospital more than 20 times in 4 months at the end of last year. The only thing that fixed it was the primary care physician (outside the hospital) shopping the case around and a hemotologist getting brought in... After about 4 months and 40 whole blood / packed red blood transfusions.

That family member is on Medicare + Medicaid, so our taxes get to foot the bill for the excess of transfusions (well, not quite, Medicare is denying payment for several visits because their review found the care inadequate and cause for subsequent readmit).

And I have another where a man received unnecessary cardiac catheter surgery because the cardiologist saw obesity plus 60 years old and assumed blockage (skipping over diagnostics to confirm a cardiac blockage)... Only to find no blockage, no constricted blood vessels or similar. Then all diagnostic effort stopped, man was discharged 3 days after with adjustments to hypertension prescriptions and a new statin just to be back in the ER 24 hours later. This time the ER doctor is pissed about the readmit and runs the tests the first 2 hours in the ER and finds the problem, an arrhythmia (I'm not going to get in depth how 3 different cardiologists and EP specialists gave 3 different arrhythmia diagnoses in 2 days, jury is still out there).

So yes, correct diagnoses would make for a lot less work and lost economic losses when readmittance drops.

My point is that hospitals and their residents as institutions tend to jump at their first assumption and skip any other effort to genuinely come to a defensible judgment. And it costs us all a great deal.

Medical malpractice is the 3rd biggest killer in the US.

Getting on this topic, yes a spinal tap is a slightly risky procedure, but with conditions that look CNS related (limb weakness), it is an easy call to order one just in case. So when the CDC is saying they are ordered too late, it's because people are slacking.

Is having a virus pop up every other year common? I know the "flu" seems to be on a yearly cycle, but every other seems a bit odd.

It's not clear that the virus actually follows a 2-year cycle. There's only been 5 years (each of which has a distinct value), for a total of 120 (=5!) possible permutations. Of these, 16 (13%) have the high-low-high-low-high pattern. By symmetry (proof below), an identical number of permutations will have the reverse (low-high-low-high-low) pattern. That's a 27% chance.

Mathematical derivation of the number of permutations with the high-low-high-low-high pattern:

Spoiler: show

Number of permutations with high-low-high-low-high pattern: since the 5 values are distinct, we can sort them and label them 1-5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Obviously, the labels preserves the ordering of the numbers. The rest of this exercise will deal with labels in place of actual values.

To avoid confusion between labels and positions, we will label the positions A-E, with B and D being low and A, C, E being high.

Each low value needs to be flanked by two higher values. Therefore, valid candidates for positions B and D are 1-3. 1 has to be in a low position because it is the smallest number in the set. We will assume WLOG that 1 is in position B.

If the label in position D is 2, then any permutation of labels in positions A, C, E are valid because the remaining labels are all greater than both of the labels in low positions. There are 6 (=3!) permutations of these values.

If the label in position D is instead 3, then 2 must be in position A. 4 and 5 may be in either of the remaining positions, giving us 2 (=2!) permutations. We now have a total of 8 permutations.

But wait, we assumed that label 1 is in position B. Each such permutation is a reflection of a permutation with label 1 in position D. This grants us a total of 8*2=16 permutations that follow the high-low-high-low-high pattern.

Number of patterns with low-high-low-high-low pattern

Spoiler: show

As in the previous step, the positions are A-E, but we assign labels 1-5 in the opposite order (1=highest, 5=lowest).

Each of the permutations generated in the previous step has labels in positions B and D flanked by higher labels (=lower values in the new ordering). Therefore these permutations have the low-high-low-high-low pattern.

Hospitals and medicine in general tends to be too focused on what your *current* care team wants investigated and the red herrings a group of 1-4 medical experts think are the cause. And in the recent decade or two they have institutionalized ignoring requests from a person's primary care or specialist unless that physician works in that hospital.

Testing and getting accurate diagnoses the first time is not stressed enough, leading to absurd re-admittance rates for hospital ERs. Even more disappointing is to see how often clinicians will simply stabilize and discharge without an ounce of care because of "lower quality" insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately medical tort reform has made misdiagnosis a completely acceptable practice until someone dies.

You can be glib about ordering a battery of tests per patient, but they are both incredibly expensive, and often performed by extremely overstressed and understaffed departments. Adding to the workload is counterproductive.

It’s easy to have that attitude when it isn’t you or someone you love gasping like a fish on land.

Hospitals and medicine in general tends to be too focused on what your *current* care team wants investigated and the red herrings a group of 1-4 medical experts think are the cause. And in the recent decade or two they have institutionalized ignoring requests from a person's primary care or specialist unless that physician works in that hospital.

Testing and getting accurate diagnoses the first time is not stressed enough, leading to absurd re-admittance rates for hospital ERs. Even more disappointing is to see how often clinicians will simply stabilize and discharge without an ounce of care because of "lower quality" insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately medical tort reform has made misdiagnosis a completely acceptable practice until someone dies.

That is fucking nonsense. Since age 60 (66 now) I was on Medicaid and now Medicare and have NEVER had "lower quality" care in my (unfortunately) plethora of medical problems. Not. Once. I have had nothing but quality care. Period. Take your fucking lies and shove em up your ass.

Is having a virus pop up every other year common? I know the "flu" seems to be on a yearly cycle, but every other seems a bit odd.

It's not clear that the virus actually follows a 2-year cycle. There's only been 5 years (each of which has a distinct value), for a total of 120 (=5!) possible permutations. Of these, 16 (13%) have the high-low-high-low-high pattern. By symmetry (proof below), an identical number of permutations will have the reverse (low-high-low-high-low) pattern. That's a 27% chance.

Mathematical derivation of the number of permutations with the high-low-high-low-high pattern:

Spoiler: show

Number of permutations with high-low-high-low-high pattern: since the 5 values are distinct, we can sort them and label them 1-5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Obviously, the labels preserves the ordering of the numbers. The rest of this exercise will deal with labels in place of actual values.

To avoid confusion between labels and positions, we will label the positions A-E, with B and D being low and A, C, E being high.

Each low value needs to be flanked by two higher values. Therefore, valid candidates for positions B and D are 1-3. 1 has to be in a low position because it is the smallest number in the set. We will assume WLOG that 1 is in position B.

If the label in position D is 2, then any permutation of labels in positions A, C, E are valid because the remaining labels are all greater than both of the labels in low positions. There are 6 (=3!) permutations of these values.

If the label in position D is instead 3, then 2 must be in position A. 4 and 5 may be in either of the remaining positions, giving us 2 (=2!) permutations. We now have a total of 8 permutations.

But wait, we assumed that label 1 is in position B. Each such permutation is a reflection of a permutation with label 1 in position D. This grants us a total of 8*2=16 permutations that follow the high-low-high-low-high pattern.

Number of patterns with low-high-low-high-low pattern

Spoiler: show

As in the previous step, the positions are A-E, but we assign labels 1-5 in the opposite order (1=highest, 5=lowest).

Each of the permutations generated in the previous step has labels in positions B and D flanked by higher labels (=lower values in the new ordering). Therefore these permutations have the low-high-low-high-low pattern.

Doesn’t this assume that whether a given year is “high” or “low” is chosen at random? Annual cycles in nature tend to be driven by specific factors, usually relating to the seasons, not random.

I can think of relatively few multi-annual cycles in nature (as distinct from cycles that take many years, but that are not intrinsically linked to the rotation of the earth).

Cicada reproduction and blackberries come to mind.

There is no choosing of "high" and "low" in my analysis. As is usual for permutation tests, I worked with permutations of actual values.

The null (default) hypothesis is that there is no pattern to the ordering of the values - any ordering of them is just as likely to occur as any other ordering. What my calculation shows is that the apparent pattern identified in the article will occur more than a quarter of the time even when the null hypothesis is in fact true. Therefore, it's premature to speculate on why the disease incidence follows a two-year cycle: there is no evidence that it does (no more than getting two heads on the first two flips evidences a pattern).

(Side note: some tropical trees flower in multiple year cycles too. It's good for things that are too expensive to happen every year and benefits from synchronization.)

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

You REALLY should remember the /s when you post things like that.

One thing folks don't often realize is that viruses have life cycles that are orders of magnitude faster than humans. This is why they evolve so fast (the annual flu isn't the same bug, after all, but is often a mutated version, or an entirely different one, which is why flu vaccines aren't considered hugely effective at times while it's very effective at other times). It's not beyond the realm of possibility that these issues are a new bug of some kind, or a synergy between similar ones (like a virus that's triggered by a virus - which is a thing).

It doesn't SOUND serious (well, not in a population-ending sort of way, not to belittle the pain and suffering being experienced by the victims and their families and friends), but it might be really tricky to figure out. That the victims all seem to be kids should be some clue, too.

I don't envy the researcher's looking at this.

The ENTIRE POINT of sarcasm is that there's some doubt as to it being a joke or not. It's simply not sarcasm if you tell everyone it's sarcasm.

when we trying to talk serous on diseases and such . instead we getting sarcasms and jokes.this shit is not funny. and if you ever read a fuking history book. this things have dam near whip the human race off the earth more then once.

Is having a virus pop up every other year common? I know the "flu" seems to be on a yearly cycle, but every other seems a bit odd.

It's not clear that the virus actually follows a 2-year cycle. There's only been 5 years (each of which has a distinct value), for a total of 120 (=5!) possible permutations. Of these, 16 (13%) have the high-low-high-low-high pattern. By symmetry (proof below), an identical number of permutations will have the reverse (low-high-low-high-low) pattern. That's a 27% chance.

Mathematical derivation of the number of permutations with the high-low-high-low-high pattern:

Spoiler: show

Number of permutations with high-low-high-low-high pattern: since the 5 values are distinct, we can sort them and label them 1-5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Obviously, the labels preserves the ordering of the numbers. The rest of this exercise will deal with labels in place of actual values.

To avoid confusion between labels and positions, we will label the positions A-E, with B and D being low and A, C, E being high.

Each low value needs to be flanked by two higher values. Therefore, valid candidates for positions B and D are 1-3. 1 has to be in a low position because it is the smallest number in the set. We will assume WLOG that 1 is in position B.

If the label in position D is 2, then any permutation of labels in positions A, C, E are valid because the remaining labels are all greater than both of the labels in low positions. There are 6 (=3!) permutations of these values.

If the label in position D is instead 3, then 2 must be in position A. 4 and 5 may be in either of the remaining positions, giving us 2 (=2!) permutations. We now have a total of 8 permutations.

But wait, we assumed that label 1 is in position B. Each such permutation is a reflection of a permutation with label 1 in position D. This grants us a total of 8*2=16 permutations that follow the high-low-high-low-high pattern.

Number of patterns with low-high-low-high-low pattern

Spoiler: show

As in the previous step, the positions are A-E, but we assign labels 1-5 in the opposite order (1=highest, 5=lowest).

Each of the permutations generated in the previous step has labels in positions B and D flanked by higher labels (=lower values in the new ordering). Therefore these permutations have the low-high-low-high-low pattern.

Is having a virus pop up every other year common? I know the "flu" seems to be on a yearly cycle, but every other seems a bit odd.

As far as I know, absolutely not, more likely it has a year long incubation period or other asymptomatic period. That is pretty scary, because it means that carriers have a year to spread the virus before they are able to be identified.

I have a close friend who's son has AFM.

A super long incubation period is not suspected. This Atlantic article from last year has some good information, including a note that it's fairly common for enteroviruses to have two or three year infection cycles.

Part of what's confounding about AFM is not so much that the virus is super rare, but that in very rare cases it breaches the central nervous system with terrible consequences. My friends whole family, and my whole family shared a similar cold last year but only her four year old son got lessions on his spinal cord and a paralyzed right arm.

Doctors were trained to look for hematological changes as the first symptoms of B12 deficiency. However, since widespread supplementation of folic acid, hematological changes are almost absent, other than a mild elevation in mean corpuscular volume. The first symptoms can sometimes be neurological. Serum B12 is not often useful - elevated MMA and homocysteine are good measures.

Hospitals and medicine in general tends to be too focused on what your *current* care team wants investigated and the red herrings a group of 1-4 medical experts think are the cause. And in the recent decade or two they have institutionalized ignoring requests from a person's primary care or specialist unless that physician works in that hospital.

Testing and getting accurate diagnoses the first time is not stressed enough, leading to absurd re-admittance rates for hospital ERs. Even more disappointing is to see how often clinicians will simply stabilize and discharge without an ounce of care because of "lower quality" insurance like Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately medical tort reform has made misdiagnosis a completely acceptable practice until someone dies.

That is fucking nonsense. Since age 60 (66 now) I was on Medicaid and now Medicare and have NEVER had "lower quality" care in my (unfortunately) plethora of medical problems. Not. Once. I have had nothing but quality care. Period. Take your fucking lies and shove em up your ass.

Well I used to have both private then Medicare+Medicaid, and the quality of care noticably dropped drastically. That's why we don't use anecdotes.

If it is potentially in the polio family of viruses would it help to get polio vaccinations done in children again?

Just one more example of the problems with vaccines. Wipe out polio with your fancy vaccines and now our kids are vulnerable to polio-like viruses. If we had just let kids keep getting sick from polio the way God intended this wouldn't be happening!

Assuming you missed a /sarcasm somewhere ^_^

I didn't think I needed it. Clearly I was wrong.

Lots of readers live to be butthurt. So anything they can grab onto they will. Like your obviously ridiculous comment. Why laugh when you can down vote?